Write him off.

When you bite your tongue all you get is a mouthful of blood.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve been honest about my feelings or really shared my thoughts. Sometimes I even find myself going to great lengths to avoid disclosing them, trying to project some semblance of nonchalance and detachment. But by nature, I am not that person. I am not one of those girls that is intriguingly removed and seductively selfish. I can be at times, and I will be with people I don’t have feelings for, but the second I feel anything I recognize the impossibility of easy indifference. So I fake it. Maybe it’s because I resent being soft. Or maybe I’m just scared to give any part of myself away.

And I sometimes wish that deep down I was capable of terrible things, because those are the women men fall desperately in love with, dangerous women. But if I care about you, I will be true. I will be what I say I am. I will give what I promise to give.  And if at some point I cannot anymore, I will remove myself graciously. 

Because I am not a dangerous woman. I am only dangerously soft. And I know this so I keep it tucked away, hidden from view. 

But I am a woman to my core. Dauntingly complicated. Sassy yet soft. Independent but affection starved. Outspoken with my thoughts but reserved with my feelings. A bundle of contradictions.

Since moving into this city there have been many different people slipping in and out of my life. Nights in dimly lit restaurants, wine fueled kisses, fumbled hand holding, endless inquiries and answers.  But I don’t feel anxiously excited anymore, there is never that pitter patter nervousness. I just quietly analyze, far removed from feeling. My heart doesn’t get involved because I don’t let it. I care but I don’t feel. I think but I don’t act. My heart is immobilized by a brain that knows better. And I don’t know if I have become too independent for my own good. Maybe I outsourced my heart’s tasks to my brain in an effort to keep things clean and simple. 

But I am not callous; I still have access to that tenderness and vulnerability, I just use it for things other than love. I fill journals with it and even show it to the strangers on the street whose stories I patiently listen to. I am still sweetly sentimental and thoughtful, but I reserve this for friends, not lovers. I still scour bookstores and small shop for little things that will make friends smile and I keep my restless heart turning, endlessly expressing admiration and affection to those around me.

But I find this part of me hard to access in romantic situations. The time will come where it is sink or swim, speak now or forever hold your heart and I will feel the words sliding around in my mouth, about to grace the tip of my tongue. But I will bite it. I am always biting it. 

Being single has made me deliciously self-reliant, more determined than ever imagined to actualize my dreams. But it has also made me intent on one thing above all else: self-preservation. Ironically, not needing love is detrimental to finding it, because it’s that need that compels you to take chances, forcing you to choke down fear of hurt and push aside pride.

But I don’t take those kinds of chances. Instead I’ve become focused inward, building myself up instead of a relationship or another person, satiated by self-sufficiency.

Or I’ve become the girl with a mouth full of blood and nothing real to hold on to. 

Submitted by Shanté Cosme.